The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Achyranthes aspera
Also called Prickly Chaff Flower, Chaff-flower, Crocus stuff, Crokars staff, Devil’s Horsewhip, Man Better Man, Worry Vine
Devil's horsewhip is a wild, weedy herb or subshrub in the amaranth family, grown mainly as a weed or medicinal plant rather than an ornamental. It spreads readily in tropical and subtropical areas and is invasive on some Pacific islands.
Achyranthes aspera (common names: chaff-flower, prickly chaff flower, devil's horsewhip, Sanskrit: अपामार्ग apāmārga) is a species of plant in the family Amaranthaceae. It is distributed throughout the tropical world. It can be found in many places growing as an introduced species and a common weed. It is an invasive species in some areas, including many Pacific Islands environments.
The juice of this plant is a potent ingredient for a mixture of wall plaster, according to the Samarāṅgaṇa Sūtradhāra, which is a Sanskrit treatise dealing with Śilpaśāstra (Hindu precepts of art and construction).
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Achyranthes aspera by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
